CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED COPENDING PATENT APPLICATION
xe2x80x9cA METHOD OF FORMULATING AND PRESENTING SEARCH QUERIES TO A TABULAR DATABASE THROUGH A USER-INTERACTIVE COMPUTER DISPLAY INTERFACExe2x80x9d, John Lawrence (Attorney Docket No. AT9-98-373), filed on the same day as the present application and assigned to the same assignee.
The present invention relates to user-interactive computer supported display technology, and particularly to such user-interactive systems and methods which provide interactive users with user friendly interfaces for database management and access.
The 1990""s decade has been marked by a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. This advance has been even further accelerated by the extensive consumer and business involvement in the Internet over the past few years. As a result of these changes it seems as if virtually all aspects of human endeavor in the industrialized world require human/computer interfaces. There is a need to make computer directed activities accessible to people who, up to a few years ago, were computer illiterate or, at best, computer indifferent.
Thus, there is continuing demand for display interfaces to computers and networks which improve the ease of use for the interactive user to access functions and data from the computer. With desktop-like interfaces including windows and icons, as well as three-dimensional virtual reality simulating interfaces, the computer industry has been working hard to fulfill such interface needs. However, in the area of database management, interfaces to the databases appear to be formidable obstacles to a great many users who would have considerable needs for data access. Of course, database access and management historically was one of the original primary computer functions, and, as such, it is full of language and functions developed and communicated between computer professionals. As a result, database management and access may be somewhat esoteric and foreboding to the new computer users in businesses and personal computer situations in which they most benefit from the development of and access to databases. Terms such as relational databases (RDBMS) structured query language (SQL) searches have put off such users. Less sophisticated users find it very difficult to frame SQL search queries out of the relatively complex language. As a result, except for some limited access to databaseS through spreadsheets, the bulk of new computer users have shown a reluctance to venture into database organization and data searching. Accordingly, the computer industries are trying to address the need to make interfaces for database organization and access less foreboding and more user friendly.
The present invention furnishes one solution to the above needs by providing a data processor controlled interactive display interface through which the user may easily access stored search queries to a database and then initiate selected searches executed by such queries. The interactive interface includes a displayed tree having at least one root node representative of a view into a table from said database and a plurality of subnodes under said root node, each subnode representative of a stored search query for said table view. The interface system also includes means for executing a search represented by a subnode in response to a user selection of said subnode, and means for presenting the results of said executed search on the display. The preferred display layout would have the tree displayed in one region of the display screen and the result of the executed search presented in a screen region next to the tree region. In this manner, the user could select a subnode representative of a particular search query, whereupon the search would be executed and the results presented to the user right next to his tree. Such an arrangement would permit the user to go through a series of searches for, let us say, comparison purposes merely by clicking on a sequence of subnodes with his mouse pointer and immediately viewing his results along side of his tree on the display.
The search interface and method of the present invention is very effective in the searching of databases having tabular organization, such as relational databases. With such databases, the search results presented are preferably tabular and present aspects of the table view represented by the root node. Also, the present invention may be most effectively used when the search queries represented by the various subnodes are in SQL. In this manner, the less sophisticated user is not called upon to structure search queries in SQL. It should also be noted that the displayed tree may have a plurality of root nodes, each of which is representative of a view into a given table in the database.